But while physical toys certainly have appeal, swapping screens for connected toys doesn’t necessarily mean better experiences for children. Stuart Brown, an expert on play and founder of the not-for-profit
National Institute for Play
based in Carmel Valley, California, says that kids need real, authentic play – activity done for no purpose other than its own sake and where the outcome is secondary to the experience.

Pure play with a side effect of learning is key to creating balanced people in life, he argues. And authentic play experiences with technology are possible if the technology is designed properly, he says.

Mark Schlichting is a children’s design specialist, CEO of
NoodleWorks Interactive
and author of the forthcoming book Understanding Kids, Play and Interactive Design: How to Create Games Children Love. The hit screen-based games Minecraft and Pokémon Go show that technology can enable pure play, he argues, engaging kids using classic, hard-wired “play patterns”. Minecraft appeals to the builder-creator instinct, while Pokémon Go appeals to children’s collector spirit – and both involve social play. These play patterns help to keep children engaged beyond the initial novelty of a device or game. But Schlichting warns that most connected toys aren’t there yet, and that “we are only at the beginning” of designing them for authentic play.

Schlichting reminds parents of the importance of choosing age-appropriate toys that match the age and stage of children (too hard is frustrating, too easy is boring) and put them in control; he says young minds open up when empowered. Kids want to know what it is, what it can do and what they can do with it, he says, and also like surprises and unexpected connections.

Others worry that some digital worlds are too controlling and don’t encourage a child to use his imagination – one of the criticisms levelled at the Mattel conversant connected doll Hello Barbie, released last year. “I find some connected toys very upsetting,” says Dorothy Singer, a Yale University psychologist who studies imaginative play. She explains how if a child is given a stuffed animal he or she can use their imagination to talk to it, give it a name and use a voice for it. If the toy already comes with a voice and personality there is less room for a child to be creative and make up the story themselves. “It takes away the child’s contribution,” Singer says.

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Both Schlichting and Brown would like to see parents less concentrated on making their kids digital diets too full of overtly educational content. Schlichting quotes children’s TV host and educator
Fred Rogers
: “For children play
is
serious learning; it is the real work of childhood.”

Sparks thinks that Smarty can navigate all these challenges, improve kids lives and optimistically predicts she could sell 2m units annually in the US at $99 a unit. She is already preparing for concerns about
privacy and data usage
when Smarty does see the light of day. Most connected toys are able to send the manufacturer data on how kids are using them, but Sparks says the information Smarty gathers will be stored anonymously and never offered to a third party.

Minor upgrades, within the same major version, say from 1.13.0 to 1.13.1, do not require any schema changes at all. You can just update the files. The database needs no update, hence it is not necessary to run the installer script.

Upgrading from 1.4 or earlier is potentially complicated because support for character sets other than UTF-8 was dropped, and the schema for storing bulk text changed. Please read the relevant section in the
UPGRADE
file.

Upgrading becomes difficult if you have modified our source code, and you don't want your changes to be overwritten. Tools such as ,
patch
, or
WinMerge
may be useful. There is also potential for trouble if you are using unmaintained extensions. Upgrade your extensions at the same time as you upgrade MediaWiki.

If you have modified the skin or use a custom skin you very likely will have to adjust it to work again with the new version of MediaWiki.

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You will laugh, smile and fist-bump along to
Anki Cozmo
and the 'bot will follow you every step of the way. Cozmo is an intelligent, fun toy - one you can program and play with - that may look simple but its cute exterior hides a complex AI brain thatyou tap into thanks to the updated and easy to use app.

All of this fun does come at a price, though. But this is one toy that's only going to get better with age - and if the latest app update is anything to go by, Anki will be making significant upgrades as and when it can.

Although the box says from 8 years and up, Cozmo had this 30-something smiling time and time again - it's a connected toy that truly connects.

The Jimu Robot TankBot Kit is part toy, part coding king. It comes in the box ready to assemble and while this will take some time, it's worth the wait. Yes, the instructions seem a bit daunting at first - it's more like a CAD file than a LEGO set - but once you get the hang of clicking all the 190 bits into place, the installation process of Jimu Robot TankBot is a lot of fun. While you are creating your TankBot, an accompanying app shows your progress through a 3D model of the thing you are creating. We recommend you using the app on a tablet rather than a phone, though, as the bigger screen lets you more easily see and manipulate the interactive instructions.